Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior

Rafael Leite graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in psychology from Florida Atlantic University. Following graduation, he worked as a research coordinator in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Miami School of Medicine. Rafael contributed to research aimed at developing and testing family-based digital health promotion and obesity prevention interventions for Hispanic adolescents, parents, and grandparents. In 2019, he began graduate school in clinical psychology (health psychology specialization) at the University of Miami, where he was a pre-doctoral fellow in the T32 Behavioral Medicine Research in Cardiovascular Disease Training Program. During graduate school, Rafael served as the Health Psychology Representative for APA’s Science Student Council as well as Chair of the Student Advisory Council for the Society for Health Psychology (APA Division 38). He was awarded the Graduate Student Award for Academic Excellence, Leadership, and Service at the University of Miami. His dissertation aims to understand the associations between weight discrimination and cardiometabolic health among adults with higher body weight. During his clinical psychology pre-doctoral internship at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Rafael is conducting a systematic review of interventions targeting weight bias internalization under the mentorship of Dr. KayLoni Olson. Rafael is excited to continue at Brown within the Cardiovascular Behavioral Medicine T32 as a postdoctoral fellow. Rafael is grateful for the wonderful training opportunities he has had and the supportive mentors and peers he has learned from along the way.